Looks like the Outer Space treaty of 67 needs to be tweaked abit
But still regardless nice to see NASA still getting into partnerships with private companies.
NASA is now working with private companies to take the first steps in exploring the moon for valuable resources like helium 3 and rare earth metals.
Initial proposals are due tomorrow for the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown program (CATALYST). One or more private companies will win a contract to build prospecting robots, the first step toward mining the moon.
The contract will be a "no funds exchanged" Space Agreement Act, which means the government will not be directly funding the effort, but will receive NASA support. Final proposals are due on March 17th, 2014. NASA has not said when it will announce the winner.
NASA works with private companies that service the International Space Station, and those partnerships have gone well. Faced with a skeleton budget, the agency is looking for innovative ways to cooperate with the private sector in order to continue research and exploration, as it did recently with a crowdsourcing campaign to improve its asteroid-finding algorithms. That campaign was launched with another private company, Planetary Resources, the billionaire-backed asteroid mining company.
"Faced with a skeleton budget, the agency is looking for innovative ways to cooperate with the private sector"
According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty of the United Nations, countries are prohibited from laying claim to the moon. The possibility of lunar mining and the emergence of private space companies has triggered a debate over lunar property rights, however.
"There’s a strong case for developing international law in this area because in 1967 it was not envisaged that anyone other than nation states would be able to explore the moon," Ian Crawford, a planetary science professor, told The Telegraph. "Clearly that is changing now and there is a case for developing the outer space treaty to include private organizations that may wish to explore the moon."
That being said, this is a neat idea. I'm not sure how economical it would be to try and mine the moon, but if some eccentric billionaires wanna throw money at this and asteroids, let 'em.
Sig images are for people who aren't fucking lazy.
It all comes down to whether they can come up with enough rare-earth elements from mining celestial bodies to make a profit after blowing a few billion on getting a space mining infrastructure out of Earth's gravity well.
The Vortex Empire: I think the real question is obviously how a supervolcano eruption wiping out vast swathes of the country would affect the 2016 election. Borgholio: The GOP would blame Obama and use the subsequent nuclear winter to debunk global warming.
I think the idea of mining in space is a good idea. Not so sure about mining on the moon though. And it's better to build the infrastructure now, when we still have more of the materials needed them we are currently using. Got to be cheaper then waiting until all the materials needed are in use.
StarSword wrote:It all comes down to whether they can come up with enough rare-earth elements from mining celestial bodies to make a profit after blowing a few billion on getting a space mining infrastructure out of Earth's gravity well.
In theory, a single large nickle-iron asteroid has more gold, silver, copper, and platinum-group metals than have ever been mined on Earth. Granted most are probably just large hunks of nickle and iron but a single motherload rock is all that's needed.
Getting the mining gear in orbit of Earth will likely be the hardest part, though actually mining it will present difficulties, too. Escape velocity on asteroids is really damn low, so you've gotta be careful not to accidentally set yourself adrift in the middle of the asteroid belt. Sure, nothing is likely to hit you. But it'll still eat up valuable fuel to get back to where you want to be.
Getting it back to Earth would also present some challenges, though they'd be more easily overcome. Have to make sure the reentry craft can handle the payload and still be stable coming back down. I'm not entirely sure what the maximum mass the vehicles they use at present have for getting back down safely.
Sig images are for people who aren't fucking lazy.
Indeed. Build a space manufacturing complex in space, use the metals there. That's way more sensible than putting anything back down. Also, to avoid OST problems just set up a concession - the government has to use materials for the benefit of all mankind or itself. Government pays to corp for the equipment, government extracts minerals, government builds ships. Then government can potentially hand them over to corporations. Problem solved.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Stas Bush wrote:Government pays to corp for the equipment
So, instead of space exploration, space agencies should fund space exploration minus private profits? Um, yeah. I really see no need to pad the pockets of privateers, except maybe for having excuse to actually move our collective butts there (we're helping The Holy Private Economy!). Anyway, it's really sad how money lost in Iraq adventure (or bankster crisis) could have funded several space elevators/loops/whatevers (some of these designs don't require any exotic materials, what we can already make would suffice) with enough money to spare for Moon return or Mars mission.
StarSword wrote:It all comes down to whether they can come up with enough rare-earth elements from mining celestial bodies to make a profit after blowing a few billion on getting a space mining infrastructure out of Earth's gravity well.
In theory, a single large nickle-iron asteroid has more gold, silver, copper, and platinum-group metals than have ever been mined on Earth. Granted most are probably just large hunks of nickle and iron but a single motherload rock is all that's needed.
Do you have some breakdowns on those?
Not questioning you, but just would love to see the studies in terms of how that was determined.
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Stas Bush wrote:Government pays to corp for the equipment
So, instead of space exploration, space agencies should fund space exploration minus private profits? Um, yeah. I really see no need to pad the pockets of privateers, except maybe for having excuse to actually move our collective butts there (we're helping The Holy Private Economy!). Anyway, it's really sad how money lost in Iraq adventure (or bankster crisis) could have funded several space elevators/loops/whatevers (some of these designs don't require any exotic materials, what we can already make would suffice) with enough money to spare for Moon return or Mars mission
Unlike Iraq, the banking crisis was an overcapacity crisis where market boundaries were overshot and therefore the stuff that was "lost" during the crisis couldn't be taken up anyway, at least not under the then-market conditions (and in general the market simply doesn't allow the satisfaction of unfinanced demand). Iraq, now... that was a real waste of industrial capital, maybe. But America's been wasting industrial capital on war for ages now. Iraq isn't special here. They run a procuremend and development program well in excess of several hundreds of billions, duh.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Stas Bush wrote:Unlike Iraq, the banking crisis was an overcapacity crisis where market boundaries were overshot and therefore the stuff that was "lost" during the crisis couldn't be taken up anyway, at least not under the then-market conditions
Instead of doing bailouts the crisis could have been handled the Swedish way, nationalize every bank that still looks sound but needs funds, let the worst ones fall, ban (by punitive 95% tax) every 'performance bonus' above middle level until crisis is over. Swedes did that and now (after re-privatizing saved banks) have healthy banking sector, rest of the world wasted anywhere between 800 to 1400 billion on bailouts without seeing much return besides making ultra-rich richer.
Iraq, now... that was a real waste of industrial capital, maybe. But America's been wasting industrial capital on war for ages now. Iraq isn't special here. They run a procuremend and development program well in excess of several hundreds of billions, duh.
The difference being the procurement at least offers some tiny returns, Iraq was nothing but pouring gasoline on pile of 10$ banknotes the size of Pentagon and burning it.
StarSword wrote:It all comes down to whether they can come up with enough rare-earth elements from mining celestial bodies to make a profit after blowing a few billion on getting a space mining infrastructure out of Earth's gravity well.
In theory, a single large nickle-iron asteroid has more gold, silver, copper, and platinum-group metals than have ever been mined on Earth. Granted most are probably just large hunks of nickle and iron but a single motherload rock is all that's needed.
Do you have some breakdowns on those?
Not questioning you, but just would love to see the studies in terms of how that was determined.
These "S-type" asteroids have very little water but are currently more economically relevant since they contain a significant fraction of metal, mostly iron, nickel and cobalt.
"However, there are a fair amount of trace elements that are economically valuable like gold, platinum and rhodium," said Lauretta. "A small, 10-meter (yard) S-type asteroid contains about 1,433,000 pounds (650,000 kg) of metal, with about 110 pounds (50 kg) in the form of rare metals like platinum and gold," said Lauretta.
There are rare asteroids with about ten times more metal in them, the metallic or "M-class" asteroids,
StarSword wrote:It all comes down to whether they can come up with enough rare-earth elements from mining celestial bodies to make a profit after blowing a few billion on getting a space mining infrastructure out of Earth's gravity well.
In theory, a single large nickle-iron asteroid has more gold, silver, copper, and platinum-group metals than have ever been mined on Earth. Granted most are probably just large hunks of nickle and iron but a single motherload rock is all that's needed.
Do you have some breakdowns on those?
Not questioning you, but just would love to see the studies in terms of how that was determined.
To expand on what Dragon posted, here is the Wiki entry:
Yeah there is a lot of sites saying the same thing but for the most part it boils down to an educated guess based off of meteorites studies and spectral analysis of asteroids.
"There are very few problems that cannot be solved by the suitable application of photon torpedoes
I think it would be an easier sell for potential investors/eccentric billionaires if you could send a robotic probe out to an existing near-earth asteroid with a reasonable orbit, and then confirm that it has a high concentration of valuable metals. At that point, it just becomes a trade-off of whether or not the costs of removing the metals from the asteroid and returning them to Earth are sufficiently* less than the value of the metals upon return to Earth or Earth orbit (more realistically Earth for the next couple of decades, since I don't see any massive self-perpetuating space colonies or manufacturing facilities in the near future). But if you don't even have a good idea of what's inside the asteroids you're looking at in terms of potential mining prospects, it's going to be nearly impossible to secure the funding without Planetary Resources-style "steps to success" arrangements.
The good news is IIRC most asteroids are loosely held together by gravity. Once you get the mining equipment on site, it's probably easier to get the metals out of an asteroid than out of a mountain on Earth.
* "Sufficiently" being the key word there. These are potentially multi-decade projects, when most investors balk at projects that run five years or more. You'd need either some truly massive, reasonably certain returns to draw them in, or government guarantees/subsidies.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
One of the more interesting ways of mining an asteroid I heard of was basically putting a giant bag around the whole thing, then pulverizing the asteroid to dust and processing that. In freefall, having your precious ore just float away is a real concern.
Guardsman Bass wrote:I think it would be an easier sell for potential investors/eccentric billionaires if you could send a robotic probe out to an existing near-earth asteroid with a reasonable orbit, and then confirm that it has a high concentration of valuable metals. At that point, it just becomes a trade-off of whether or not the costs of removing the metals from the asteroid and returning them to Earth are sufficiently* less than the value of the metals upon return to Earth or Earth orbit (more realistically Earth for the next couple of decades, since I don't see any massive self-perpetuating space colonies or manufacturing facilities in the near future). But if you don't even have a good idea of what's inside the asteroids you're looking at in terms of potential mining prospects, it's going to be nearly impossible to secure the funding without Planetary Resources-style "steps to success" arrangements.
The good news is IIRC most asteroids are loosely held together by gravity. Once you get the mining equipment on site, it's probably easier to get the metals out of an asteroid than out of a mountain on Earth.
* "Sufficiently" being the key word there. These are potentially multi-decade projects, when most investors balk at projects that run five years or more. You'd need either some truly massive, reasonably certain returns to draw them in, or government guarantees/subsidies.
This is the problem, nobody is willing to risk something that won't really pay off for the next ten years. But it's perfect for people in their thirties/forties. This is the next IBM, Micro$oft, Apple. Now is the time to invest in this stuff. It should be offering returns right around retirement age. It will set you, your kids and their kids up for life.
Guardsman Bass wrote:... since I don't see any massive self-perpetuating space colonies or manufacturing facilities in the near future
Considering the advancements in enclosed biospheres (BIOS-3, Biosphere 2) and the lessons learned, and the progress in new materials, radiation shielding and computer modelling I don't understand why humanity won't have permanent space manufacturing complexes to serve ongoing exploration somewhere in 2030-2050. We are capable, and with the restoration of China and India as prominent production centers of the world in this century our industrial capacity is greater than ever before.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Guardsman Bass wrote:I think it would be an easier sell for potential investors/eccentric billionaires if you could send a robotic probe out to an existing near-earth asteroid with a reasonable orbit, and then confirm that it has a high concentration of valuable metals. At that point, it just becomes a trade-off of whether or not the costs of removing the metals from the asteroid and returning them to Earth are sufficiently* less than the value of the metals upon return to Earth or Earth orbit (more realistically Earth for the next couple of decades, since I don't see any massive self-perpetuating space colonies or manufacturing facilities in the near future). But if you don't even have a good idea of what's inside the asteroids you're looking at in terms of potential mining prospects, it's going to be nearly impossible to secure the funding without Planetary Resources-style "steps to success" arrangements.
The good news is IIRC most asteroids are loosely held together by gravity. Once you get the mining equipment on site, it's probably easier to get the metals out of an asteroid than out of a mountain on Earth.
* "Sufficiently" being the key word there. These are potentially multi-decade projects, when most investors balk at projects that run five years or more. You'd need either some truly massive, reasonably certain returns to draw them in, or government guarantees/subsidies.
You mean like the Osiris mission
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission began its countdown on December 9, at 7:43 PM EST, with 999 days remaining until the opening of the mission’s launch window in September 2016.
The mission’s scientific objectives are:
Return and analyze a sample of pristine carbonaceous regolith;
Map global properties, chemistry, and mineralogy of the asteroid;
Investigate texture, morphology, volatile chemistry, and spectral properties of the regolith;
Measure the Yarkovsky effect; and
Provide direct comparison to telescope-based data of the entire asteroid popul
Darmalus wrote:One of the more interesting ways of mining an asteroid I heard of was basically putting a giant bag around the whole thing, then pulverizing the asteroid to dust and processing that. In freefall, having your precious ore just float away is a real concern.
This is probably a good plan. One of the biggest issues with asteroid mining that I can foresee is the difficulty of operating heavy machinery in zero gravity. Start a flywheel spinning and conservation of angular momentum causes you to spin. Slam a crushing hammer into a pile of rocks and the rocks squirt out all over the place, while the hammer recoils up in a way not normal on Earth. Things like conveyor belts won't work like they do on Earth, or at all.*
*Unless, of course, your ore-processing plant is spun for artificial gravity, and even then it won't be quite the same.
Guardsman Bass wrote:... since I don't see any massive self-perpetuating space colonies or manufacturing facilities in the near future
Considering the advancements in enclosed biospheres (BIOS-3, Biosphere 2) and the lessons learned, and the progress in new materials, radiation shielding and computer modelling I don't understand why humanity won't have permanent space manufacturing complexes to serve ongoing exploration somewhere in 2030-2050. We are capable, and with the restoration of China and India as prominent production centers of the world in this century our industrial capacity is greater than ever before.
Who's funding it, though? You'd need a monumental shift in government priorities to get the type of money these things need, or a major rise in investor interest in supporting them. Neither seems likely unless we get another "Space Race", and that hasn't happened yet. Maybe space funding will pick up a bit if China ever gets around to doing a manned Moon mission, but I'm skeptical.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
